Missing couple found dead in Belize, friend says
Toronto woman Francesca Matus and her American boyfriend, Drew DeVoursney, have been found dead after having disappeared last week, according to a friend and local media.
The couple’s bodies were found in the northern village of Chan Chen around 5 p.m. Monday, Breaking Belize News reported.
Nancy Rifenbark, a friend of Matus’s who was with the couple the night they vanished, also told the Star of the deaths.
“Both bodies were found just a few minutes ago and they’re both dead,” said Rifenbark on Monday evening.
Matus, 52, and DeVoursney, 36, had last been seen in a bar in Belize’s northern Corozal district on the night of April 25. After leaving the bar, the pair got into Matus’s SUV, headed for her house about 10 kilometres away, police in the small Central American nation said.
The vehicle was found abandoned in a cane field on Sunday afternoon.
Matus, a mother of two, was supposed to fly back to Canada on April 26. A friend became suspicious when they arrived at Matus’s house to take her to the airport, and found Matus wasn’t there.
Timothy Barfield, who befriended DeVoursney in Iraq when they served together as marines, told the Star he filed a report with the FBI and contacted a private investigation firm in Florida after the couple went missing.
Search parties of 70 to 80 people were organized, and aerial searches were conducted, Barfield added.
“Drew, he’s kind of a free spirit, but he’s always been in contact with me,” Barfield said on the phone from West Palm Beach, Fla. “No matter if he was going to go somewhere, he would let somebody know, ‘Hey, I’m going to be gone for a week or two . . .’ If (he and Matus) were going to do something — you know, go out to the islands or go anywhere — they would have let somebody know.”